Seagate announces hardware FDE for laptop and desktop machines

Dave Howe DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk
Sat Sep 15 14:36:17 EDT 2007


Leichter, Jerry wrote:
> First off, it depends on how the thing is implemented.  Since the entire
> drive is apparently encrypted, and you have to enter a password just to
> boot from it, some of the support is in an extended BIOS or some very
> early boot code, which is "below" any OS you might actually have on the
> disk.  
If I had to guess, I would suggest they were using the ATA "secure" hd 
password api, and really providing security rather than the 
firmware-lock usually associated with such passwords. That would allow 
you to retrofit it to a lot of laptops which already use that 
functionality, in a plug-and-play manner.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com



More information about the cryptography mailing list